1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a copy system and a copy controller, and more particularly to a copy system composed of a scanner, a plotter, and a copy controller, as well as to the copy controller itself.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional color copy system is generally composed of a computer into which an image processing program has been installed, and a color scanner and a color plotter connected to the computer via cables. Since such a conventional system has been designed to provide high performance, a user is required to have expert level technical knowledge on color management, and to memorize how to set and operate the image processing program through use of a thick manual. Therefore, using the conventional color copy system is difficult for beginners (untrained persons).
Moreover, in the conventional color copy system, after complete image data of an original document obtained through use of a scanner are first stored into a magnetic disk device or a similar device, image processing is performed for the image data, and an image obtained through the image processing is then output to the plotter. Therefore, the computer must have a storage means having a large capacity for storing complete image data. Moreover, the total processing time from the start of input of image data to the start of output of an image is sometimes on the order of a few tens of minutes.